Police told of 'bad blood' in family before rapper shot in Duxbury

Bad blood had been brewing between Raymond Scott and his nephew Gai Scott's side of the family for a while – increasingly bitter arguments, even alleged threats from the rapper and reality TV star who calls himself “Benzino.”

Bad blood had been brewing between Raymond Scott and his nephew Gai Scott’s side of the family for a while – increasingly bitter arguments, even alleged threats from the rapper and reality TV star who calls himself “Benzino.”

When his mother died, Raymond Scott said he wanted to avoid family contact and trouble. But trouble found the whole family anyway Saturday.

“Benzino” Scott was shot and wounded as he drove his SUV in his mother’s funeral procession, and Gai Scott – whose Bentley was in the procession – was charged with assault with intent to murder.

Those are the conflicting stories that a Plymouth County prosecutor and Gai Scott’s attorney presented Wednesday at a Plymouth District Court hearing to determine whether Scott was too dangerous a risk to be granted bail.

Judge Thomas Kirkland didn’t take long to reject defense attorney Jon Ciraulo’s request for $35,000 cash bail, GPS monitoring and other conditions for Gai Scott. Scott will be held without bail in the county jail, as prosecutors asked. He will be back in court April 25 for a probable-cause hearing.

Ciraulo and prosecutor Amanda Fowle declined comment on the decision, as did Scott family members who attended the hearing. “There won’t be any comment,” one family member said.

One family friend, Ron Robinson of Wareham, said Raymond Scott and Gai Scott were involved in “family disagreements that have been festering for a while.” But he didn’t describe what those disputes were.

As Robinson and 14 other friends and family members of Scott’s watched – while four court officers stood guard – Ciraulo and Fowle argued their cases, in a preview of what an eventual trial would look like.

With Gai Scott listening closely from a defense table seat, Ciraulo told Kirkland that Scott’s behavior after the shooting was “consistent with someone acting in self-defense” – even telling Plymouth police “I’m the shooter.”

Fowle countered that Gai Scott had purchased a third handgun the same week as the funeral and that he allegedly opened fire on an open highway.

State Trooper Robert Klimas, the only witness called to testify, painted an unsettling scene from interviews in the police report – Raymond Scott’s red Dodge SUV closing fast as the procession moved south on Route 3 in Duxbury, with the SUV and Gai Scott’s Bentley jockeying for position in the right lane and breakdown lane before shots were fired.

In an interview at the Middleboro State Police barracks, Gai Scott said he was in the right lane, in the procession, when Raymond Scott pulled alongside him in the left lane, rolled down the passenger window and said, “You have a problem with me? I’m going to (expletive) kill you.”

Page 2 of 2 - Gai Scott said it looked like Raymond Scott flashed a silver gun but didn’t point it at him. Gai Scott said his uncle had been sending him and other family members threatening text messages for a week, so he took a 9 mm Walther pistol from his holster and fired “six or seven rounds” at Raymond Scott’s car. Then Gai Scott took a Remington .45-caliber handgun and emptied it as well.

Klimas said Gai Scott then reloaded the Walther and fired two rounds “through his (open) legs onto the floor” of the Bentley before he could raise it to fire again.

Raymond Scott was hit in the right shoulder and grazed in the back. He stopped his SUV, got out and ran for help from other cars. His aunt took him off the highway to the Duxbury police station, and from there was taken to South Shore Hospital in Weymouth.

He later told police that he wasn’t traveling to his mother’s funeral at St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Plymouth, but instead was going to meet a friend in Plymouth before he took an afternoon plane flight from Boston.

Klimas also said Raymond Scott told police there was “bad blood in the family,” and that he had arranged for a private wake viewing at Keohane Funeral Home in Quincy.

At the judge’s request, Ciraulo played a copy of a Boston police officer’s phone message to a Gai Scott family member who had requested a restraining order against Raymond Scott – evidence, Ciraulo said, that they had felt threatened by Raymond Scott.

Fowle said the message showed no evidence of a violent threat. “It was just, ‘I’m afraid’” she said.